"My father's not so very poor," he thought, "he's Signor Carboni's _mezzadro_ (tenant) though he will call him Master. No, he's not poor. But, of course, he couldn't pay back what's--been spent--on me, if the thing doesn't come off. Whatever would happen? What is happening at this moment? Aunt Tatàna has spoken. What can she have said? What sort of answer can the benefactor have given? He's the most loyal man in the world--what will he say when he hears that his protégé has dared to betray--I can imagine him walking up and down the room very thoughtful; and Aunt Tatàna looking at him, pale herself and oppressed. Oh, my God! what will happen?" groaned the boy squeezing his head in his hands. He felt suffocated, rushed into the court, sprang on the low surrounding wall, waited and listened. Nothing! nothing! He returned to the kitchen, saw the kitten again in ambush, again drove it away. He thought of the cats prowling round the Pantheon. He thought of Aunt Varvara and the wax candle he was to carry for her to the Basilica of the Holy Martyrs; he thought of his father busy in the padrone's _tancas_; he remembered the sonorous pine-tree, which murmured like an angry giant, the king of a solitary region of stubble and thicket. He thought of the _nuraghe_ and Aunt Varvara's vision reproduced by fever in himself. He remembered a gold bracelet seen in the museum at the Baths of Diocletian. Behind all these fleeting memories, two thoughts met and rolled themselves into one like two clouds, one dark, one bright, rolling together in space--the thought of _that woman_ and the thought of what was going on in Signor Carboni's study. "I've said I won't think of it," he muttered, vexed with himself. And again he chased the cat, as if he wished to chase away the idea which, cat-like, continually returned against his will. He went back to the courtyard, looked and listened. Nothing. About a quarter of an hour later two voices sounded behind the low wall, then a third, a fourth. They belonged to the neighbours who nightly assembled for a gossip before Maestro Pane's shop. "By our Lady," cried Rebecca's piercing tones, "I have seen five falling stars! That means something. There's going to be a catastrophe." "Perhaps Antichrist's coming. They say he'll be born of an animal," said a man's voice; "an animal like you." "Like your wife, you beast!" screamed Rebecca. "Take this, my carnation!" said the handsome Agata, who was eating something as she talked. The man began rude talk, but the old carpenter interposed. "Hold your tongue, or I'll have you on the millstones, you skinned weasel." The peasant was not to be silenced, so the women went away and sat under the low wall of the courtyard. Aunt Sorchedda, a little old woman who forty years before had been servant in the Intendant's house, began to tell for the thousandth time the story of her mistress.